I was just struck by some of the similarities between Futurama and Judge Dredd (no, not the crappy Stallone movie, but the original comic - still going strong 25 years on!), and wondered what would have happened - or how long Fry would have lasted - if he'd woken up in 2124 rather than 2999. While there's no such crime as 'job desertion' (with an 87% unemployment rate, moonlighting is actually a crime in MC1), I doubt the Judges would have let him off for causing damage in the Head Museum. "Five years, creep!"

Leela would have faced the same problems in Mega-City One as she does in NNYC - mutants are banned from the city, so she'd have to pass as an alien. As long as she avoids DNA tests, she'd probably do okay, with her squeaky-clean attitude to life.

Bender... well, while I can see him getting along famously with 'Call Me Kenneth', who led the 2099 robot revolution ("Die, fleshy ones!" ), he'd have to be a lot more subtle with his criminal tendencies. The Judges tend to blow rogue robots to pieces...

Forget that. What about Fry waking up in Alpha City Complex for the role play game Paranoia. They would have dragged him off and cloned him (five times) then shot him for being a communist spy. Clone one would be activated and sent to R&D where he would have met a rather messy end. Along trots clone two, who is approached by the secret society of the Trekkies, Fry delighted by this joins and due to his incompetance the Computer finds out and has him executed as a member of a secret society. Clone three enters stage left, completes a few sucessfull missions for the Computer and starts to rise in the ranks, then is promptly executed for suspiciously over achieving.Cut to clone four. Fry steps out of the cloning birth only to die in the crossfire between some violet clearance programmers and some poor souls thought to be commies.Clone five? Well, we will see.

Anyone remember the game Syndicate Wars? What if Fry woke up in a world like that? All civillians are assigned jobs through chips in the back of their heads that keep them in blissful pleasant worlds that cover the real world that is harsh and industrial and is completely under control of one super company and all that brake free of their chips, all that don't conform, are classed as Beta-3 security threats and are shot by teams of cyborg "Agents".Sound familiar? This is years before the Matrix.

Fry would be one of the non-conformists, the "unguided" but not really millitant though.

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